Balancing islanded residential microgrids using demand side management

Now that the internet of things is emerging, control of domestic assets within smart microgrids is also gaining more interest. Various demand side management approaches are presented in literature to control these assets and steer the aggregated consumption profile towards a target profile. Furthermore, these microgrids may operate in islanded mode for short periods in which energy balance is important. This paper proposes a fast control method to control domestic assets in an islanded microgrid by means of 2-way communication and local measurement data. By using the potential of domestic assets, required capacity of backup storage and power ratings of backup generators can be decreased and/or the operation time of the islanded microgrid can be increased. Simulations of a use case show that the storage capacity can be significantly decreased (from 54.3 kWh to 29.6 kWh without loss of QoS) when households in a neighborhood are cooperating.